"Yes?" said Grace, smiling in her slow way. "I think Ma and I would be glad to believe we'd never have to see a needle again. _She_ kept me at it. You see, Charley, we've been keeping the wolf from the front door and the kitchen door, while you and Father were guarding the woodshed." "What do you mean?" Then suddenly, "You don't tell me--you don't mean that--? Was _that_ what made your hands so rough, yours and Mrs. Rawn's yonder? What have you got there, Mrs. Rawn--something in silk? Oh, a pair of braces, eh? For me? How nice of you." Grace smiled again. "I'll be jealous of Ma. Shall I go and get my own work to show you?" "You mean for your father, of course--" "Indeed, no. Neither Pa nor you can afford silk embroidered braces, Charles! I've done six pairs this week, and Ma--well Ma must have done a dozen. She's wonderful." "But what do you mean?" asked the young man, still puzzled. Grace said nothing further, but held up her blackened finger-tips and looked him in the eye. A blush of comprehension came to his face. "You women!" he exclaimed. "You've worked as hard as we did; and we didn't know!" "We had to do something," said Mrs. Rawn quietly. "I tried a number of things. We could earn practically nothing in the sweatshop work. Grace addressed envelopes here at home at night, for a while--but that's what every other girl in all the city's doing, I think. I saw some of these embroidered things in the window of a men's furnishing shop. I went in and told the man I could do them as well as that for twenty-five cents a pair. We've had as much as thirty cents for some of our best ones. Why, dear me! I hadn't done any work in silk for years and years; but it all came back. We earned quite a bit here. It kept the table." "My God!" said Halsey. "And I've been eating here!" VI "It was our part," said Laura Rawn. "It was all we could do. A woman just has to do the best she can, you know. Well, we helped." "A woman has to do the best she can," repeated Laura Rawn gently, seeing that this left Halsey awkward. "If she's a true woman, she tries to help. I want that Grace should always think of it in just that way." That, it seemed, was the foolish philosophy of Laura Rawn; a philosophy not often written on the docket of divorce courts, to be sure. Perhaps it is--or once was--inscribed on dockets elsewhere. END OF BOOK ONE BOOK TWO CHAPTER I THE NEW MR. RAWN I